Re: Conlangs in roleplaying games?

On 10/27/07, geijss streijde <gijsstrider@...> wrote:
> I've been toying with the idea of creating a language for a world in a
> pencil and paper RPG I'm creating (the world, not the RPG), and was
> wondering if this is done by more people.
As David said, certainly.

The first artlang I was exposed to, for example, was initially created
for just this purpose -- Zompist's Verdurian (see his "secret history"
at http://www.zompist.com/secreth.htm ).

I'm also reminded of Justin B Rye's L4892 -
http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/l4892/ - which was also created for
an RPG IIRC. (It features an algorithmic method for coining new words
- that fit the phonology! - with a couple of dice rolls, which might
be of interest to you.)

> if this is something with which I could add something to my world.
I would think so.

It also depends on how cooperative your players are; the more willing
they are to learn bits of the language (e.g. to recognise city-name
morphemes or even to speak a bit of it, say, for spellcasting, as
David and Mark mentioned), the more interesting the experience can be
for both them and you.

But even if they only come across it passively (e.g. you use it
predominantly for names), it can add flavour to the world IMO.

Go for it!

Though I just remembered something JBR wrote in the introduction to
L4892. Whether or not you expect your players to pick up the language
will influence its design; if you think they might want to learn it,
you're going to want to keep it fairly simple, especially if - as most
native speakers of English, I'd wager - they're not particularly used
to languages with a lot of inflection. If it's mostly for your own
use, you're of course more free to have sixty-four different cases and
a split-S syntax, or whatever.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>